In light of the recent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, new compliance legislation is expected throughout the oil and gas industry. Thus, conformity with such legislation has become of increasing concern, especially since compliance may be the only avenue through which operations resume in the Gulf of Mexico. Current indications are that a new management control environment will be imposed that requires heightened record keeping and oversight throughout the well planning and completion stages.
Presently, however, there are no effective platforms to meet this need. Moreover, there is cause for concern for a number of other reasons. First, operators lack the experience in this changing environment. Second, well planning documentation is often difficult to locate and sometime never read. Third, current training methodologies are insufficient to cover all circumstances which might occur during planning of the well. Fourth, changes made during well planning are not currently tracked. Lastly, the knowledge attained by personnel during the well planning stage is often lost because there are no means by which to capture it.
Accordingly, in view of the foregoing shortcomings, there is a need in the art for a system which allows the collaborative planning, management and tracking of each step along a well planning workflow, thereby providing the necessary platform to meet the coming challenges in the industry.